| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: eyebrows.--There,' he added, pointing to his own brow. 'Her forehead
was clammy; her fleshless hands were like bones covered with soft
skin; the veins and muscles were perfectly visible. She must have been
very handsome; but at this moment I was startled into an indescribable
emotion at the sight. Never, said those who wrapped her in her shroud,
had any living creature been so emaciated and lived. In short, it was
awful to behold! Sickness so consumed that woman, that she was no more
than a phantom. Her lips, which were pale violet, seemed to me not to
move when she spoke to me.
" 'Though my profession has familiarized me with such spectacles, by
calling me not infrequently to the bedside of the dying to record
La Grande Breteche |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: Julien felt that blankets had been heaped upon him,---that some
gentle hand was bathing his scorching face with vinegar and
water. Vaguely also there came to him the idea that it was
night. He saw the shadow-shape of a woman moving against the red
light upon the wall;---he saw there was a lamp burning.
Then the delirium seized him: he moaned, sobbed, cried like a
child,---talked wildly at intervals in French, in English, in
Spanish.
---"Mentira!---you could not be her mother ... Still, if you
were---And she must not come in here,---jamais! ... Carmen, did
you know Adele,---Adele Florane? So like her,---so like,---God
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: himself, when he ought to wear a label round his neck marked
'Dangerous,' such as they have at other places where it is
slippery and brittle. When he is here, I keep saying to myself,
'Too smooth, too smooth!'"
"Aunt Jane," said Harry, gravely, "I know Malbone very well,
and I never knew any man whom it was more unjust to call a
hypocrite."
"Did I say he was a hypocrite?" she cried. "He is worse than
that; at least, more really dangerous. It is these high-strung
sentimentalists who do all the mischief; who play on their own
lovely emotions, forsooth, till they wear out those fine
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